Rubio Gains GOP Influence

Sen. Marco Rubio will follow his prime-time response to President Obama's State of the Union by soon introducing bipartisan legislation on student loans and small business, the latest steps to introduce the senator to the American people. Neil King has details on The News Hub. Photo: AP.

By

Neil King Jr.

Updated Feb. 11, 2013 8:39 p.m. ET

Sen. Marco Rubio plans to follow his prime-time response to the president's State of the Union address with his own legislative push on education funding and help for small businesses—all part of a larger effort to build his image as a conservative leader with a bipartisan bent.

The Florida senator's star turn as GOP spokesman Tuesday night, when he will give his party's official response to the president, comes as Republicans increasingly look to the 41-year-old lawmaker to be a flag-carrier for the party after its election setbacks last year.

"There is no question that he is one of the rising stars in our party," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He described Mr. Rubio in an interview as "arguably the best communicator we have had in decades."

ENLARGE

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has been picked to give the Republicans' official response to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday.
Getty Images

Rubio advisers say the first-term senator will use his most prominent national perch to date to critique Mr. Obama's reliance on government solutions but also to lay out proposals to simplify the tax code and help the middle class, themes he has promoted in recent speeches.

The senator will then begin rolling out a series of bills in coming weeks, including one to create a new tax credit to help less-affluent families pay for private-school tuition and expenses, his advisers say. The senator's office is also drafting bills to roll back business regulations and modify some corporate tax provisions. Mr. Rubio expects to have Democratic co-sponsors for the measures, his aides said.

The bills will constitute the next steps in the artful rolling out of the Rubio political brand, as he weighs a run for president in 2016. The effort has already included a spate of interviews with conservative media outlets, a TMZ gossip video that deemed him "dreamy" and a Time magazine cover that heralded him as the "Republican savior."

The media offensive has mixed policy speeches with nods to pop culture—Mr. Rubio released his playlist of songs on the Spotify website, including the late rapper Tupac Shakur—in an attempt to round out his appeal. Next up, his aides say, will be a set of interviews focused on sports and entertainment topics.

Since the November election, Mr. Rubio has joined a number of other GOP leaders, including Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who are working to soften the party's image and to realign its message in the eyes of voters.

The core of Mr. Rubio's pitch is that the country—and his own party—needs to find new ways to foster the creation of well-paying middle-class jobs, to build new rungs up the ladder for those in the working class.

Mr. Rubio was elected in the tea-party wave of 2010, but he is far from a conservative firebrand. While other conservative newcomers to the Senate have gone out of their way to reject compromise, Mr. Rubio has tacked the other way.

He is a leading voice in a bipartisan Senate effort to overhaul the country's immigration laws. Some proposed provisions have drawn sharp criticism from conservatives, most prominently one that could allow illegal immigrants to one day gain citizenship.

Solving the immigration problem is crucial to the country and to the GOP, Mr. Rubio said. "This is a lingering issue that continues to haunt the country," he said in a recent interview, adding that Republicans can't just oppose what the White House has put forward but must "come up with an alternative that stays true to our principles."

Mr. Rubio's first big effort in the Senate typified his pursuit of legislative harmony. Titled the Agree Act and co-sponsored with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the bill brought together various pro-jobs proposals—such as specialty tax credits, relaxed rules ondepreciation—that both parties had agreed to in other settings. The package intentionally avoided any contentious provisions. While only portions of the bill became law, the partnership with Mr. Coons led the two to cooperate on four other bills last year. "I have been very surprised by Marco's willingness to take political risks by working with me on things that are hard to describe in narrow ideological terms," Mr. Coons said in an interview.

Mr. Rubio isn't without critics. Democrats in Florida point out he struck a more hard-line note on the immigration front while a lawmaker there. He had to correct his own Senate biography when it was pointed out his father came to the U.S. before the rise of Cuba's Fidel Castro, and not as a political refugee. Even his own memoir is heavy on personal history and light on vision for the country.

Also, Mr. Rubio did cast a "no" vote against one of the biggest bipartisan bills in recent times: the measure to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealthiest taxpayers, which passed with a vote of 89-8 on New Year's Eve. He explained his vote by saying the bill would cost thousands of jobs as companies moved to pay higher tax bills. The vote could also serve to protect Mr. Rubio from criticism from fiscal conservatives should he run for national office.

People who have known Mr. Rubio for years, going back to his days in the Florida Legislature, agree that the biggest misconception is that he's some sort of brash ideologue.

During his eight years as a state lawmaker, the last two of which were as Florida House speaker, Mr. Rubio earned a reputation as a skilled climber but also as a policy technician.

He held town-hall-style meetings across the state for two years before assuming the speakership—"idearaisers," he called them—to get input on what people wanted. He turned the top 100 ideas into a book, which then became his legislative agenda. More than half of them eventually became law, including rules to curb gang violence and sexual predators and to promote energy-efficient buildings and cars.

"Marco has always been a solutions-oriented guy," said Will Weatherford, a Republican and the current Florida House speaker. "He wants to make things happen."

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